1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for isolating malfunctions occurring in sender-receiver equipment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electronic communication switching systems, such as electronic telephone switching systems, have employed registers for receiving and temporarily storing call processing information from calling lines. Register junctors have been employed for conveying the call processing information to the appropriate registers. The register junctors have been provided with senders and receivers, such as touch calling multi-frequency (TCMF) and multi-frequency (MF) receivers and multi-frequency (MF) senders, and the senders and receivers have been selectively interconnected with the register junctors for use thereby. Should a malfunction occur during the operation of the system, a call would then have to be reinitiated. Eventually, the service would be degraded in that the initiation of calls would continuously be repeated. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a method and apparatus for quickly and efficiently isolating the source of the malfunction so that repair or replacement could take place to alleviate the problem. In this regard, it would be desirable to quickly and efficiently be able to determine whether the problem is caused by the register junctor, the sender-receiver unit or by the switching network interconnecting them.